Triathlon trials and travelling tales

April – work and marathon-ing

Normally I go on about how time flies and I can’t believe it’s time for a new month. Well, this month seems to have gone on forever. Honestly, it has been so slow, March feels like a year ago. It was a pretty good month if an incredibly busy and quite stressful one!

I didn’t leave the UK once in April but still managed to get around a bit, staying in 3 different places – home, an air Bnb in Brighton and a posh hotel in East London. My most popular Instagram pics were:

In April I:

Swam: a pathetic 3 times and a total of 2460m (still more than last month!). In my defence, I ran a marathon – and I am going to go swimming tomorrow I promise.

Cycled: 126.5km (still more than last month!) In my defence, I ran a marathon – and I am about to get May off to a good start by going cycling in five minutes…

Ran: 83.2km – about half of last month’s huge totals. To be fair, the marathon month is a weird one because of course it involves the marathon, but also taper and recovery – hence not particularly high numbers! My recovery is over now after 2 weeks and I have to say I miss my routine of 3 runs a week! Looking forward to marathon training again in the summer.

Yoga: just two yoga classes this month, both post-marathon and I found them both really difficult after not going for a few weeks!

Read:

Not very many books this month – I started reading a huge history book about the Middle East which has halted my reading progress somewhat!

A long way to a small and angry planet by Becky Chambers – review here. This is such a great, fun, imaginative novel and I loved reading it.

Children of the Jacaranda Tree by Sahar Delijani – I’m going to review this one as well. Extremely different from the above, it is set in Iran after the revolution and is written beautifully. Awfully sad and yet hopeful at the same time, it might not be a “fun” novel but I still hugely enjoyed reading it.

My best moment in April was: watching my beautiful, beautiful best friend walk down the aisle to get married.

And also leaving my mum behind in the last few miles of Brighton Marathon and sprinting the last mile to the finish (well it felt like sprinting!) overtaking everyone around me.

﻿My worst moment in April came in the week before the marathon, either when I went to the toilets to have a little cry at work and slammed my finger in the door, not helping the emotion situation, or when I realised I had worked until midnight for three, long stressful days and I hugely panicked about having the energy necessary to run a marathon. But hey – I did! And I enjoyed it 🙂 (most of it!)

Right now I am:

Reading: that history book I mentioned, which I was also reading at the beginning of last month – The great war for civilisation: the conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk.

Listening to: I’m getting back into the Trail Runner Nation podcasts. I still hate the first five minutes – five whole minutes of adverts that firstly are disguised to make it look like the hosts are just chatting about a product they really like, and secondly, are quite often products solely directed at men – making it even more boring! But the rest of the podcast is great and the chat between the hosts and their guests is incredibly inspiring – they just all love running and I love that.

Enjoying: the fact we have an offer on our flat! Although that is also terrifying!

Excited about: going back to Madrid in 3 weeks time! I have been reading over all my old blog posts from when I lived there (like this one) and I absolutely cannot wait to go back.

Hello!

I'm a beginner triathlete, ultra runner and book-lover with constant itchy feet - this blog is about my experiences in triathlon, running and my attempts to combine travelling the world with a busy job in law.

Join me as I explore new places, compete in new events and share restaurant reviews and numerous book reviews.